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If this pours a buckload of salt to unmentionable people because of issues within the other side like drops, then it is working as intended. And I'm lazy to do one of em.

I PRESENT TO YOU THE ADMIRAL HIPPERS.

Seriously, the silhouette can mistake em for a battleship.

I remember retia once saying that Germany had a weird way of naming things such as the H41 being called GroßDeutshland (Great Germany if that's correct) but most of their ships had names of famous military men such Reinhard Scheer having his namesake on the Deuschland class Admiral Scheer.

Since Germany's starting to have a considerable buildup in their navy such as rearming the hell out of them which scared France and Great Britain because at this stage it wasn't the Weimar Republic anymore but the Germany with the red banner and big-ass swastika (the swastika itself isn't "bad", its the usage and that its getting to the fact that swastika = nazi = bad that crossed the line on "dis symbol maeks me cri everytiem) on it led by the fearless fuhrer that was advocating rapid military bits. As such, the Kreigsmarine had wanted some heavy cruisers because of said rapid rearming and had their shipyards crunch to the max. One shipyard firm, Blohm und Voss, which still continues their tradition in how to ship like seasoned professionals to this day, crunched out the first of the sisters which was to be the class: the Admiral Hipper.

There were five of em at best: Admiral Hipper, Prinz Eugen, Blucher, Seydlitz and Lutzow. Seydlitz, and I don't mean the battlecruiser, was about to go full carrier but got cancelled and Lutzow was sold to the Russians and had a new name, Petropavlovsk-something.

Well its something.

The Admiral Hippers had about 3 inches of belt with a modest 20mm torpedo bulkhead, about 2 inches of deck with the same double layer to arm bomb fuzes before actually punching through and exploding in the ship per se, 6 inches of conning tower, 4.1 inches of turret and have what you. Their offensive set comprised of eight 20.3cm SK C/34's in four dual mount turrets with the AB-XY configuration which could lob a round at about 36km with an impressive shell velocity although this limited barrel life to about 300-400 rounds per reline, sets of 10.5's in dual mount which had a reasonable service ceiling of 6k feet and 8km of horizon reach, some 3.7cm guns, a bunch of 2cm guns and the torpedo tubes chucking G7a torpedoes which, if records were true, were utter "shit" for torpedoes. They could reach about 33 knots at full power which is quite reasonable for a ship her size and later had degaussing equipment installed in order to lessen the chances of a mine (how to naval mine: either magnetic resonance to trigger explosion when ship gets too close or simple contact). Each numbers of 37mm and 20mm differed for each ship as most got retro'd so hard when in their service run with some of them getting flakvierling mountings except for Lutzow as she was in Russian hands or Seydlitz for that matter. About the AA suite... yeah... having a good service ceiling is one thing, getting them to hit is another. Precision fire over sheer volume, choose. There was that allegation of Bismarck's AA directors being unable to crunch to the speed of the Fairey Swordfish which had 80 knots whilst the contraptions had a 100 knot low crunch.

Stalking Norwegian waters because commerce raiding is fun.

Admiral Hipper and Prinz Eugen operated as commerce raiders, Seydlitz was chosen to become an auxiliary carrier because the emphasis on making carriers actually dawn upon the Kriegsmarine now and Blucher got a serious case of mag det/magazine detonation from a fire due to being shot at by the "obsolete" guns (you think there was guns? too bad, there's a torpedo turret only the defenders knew about. boohoo) of the the Oscarsborg fortress during the skirmish at Drobak Sound which aimed to "gently" persuade Hakon VII, then the incumbent king, to comply to Germany as well as raid the mad gold they had who was holed in the Oscarsborg fortress. They failed and the royal family fled to the UK with all the mad gold in tow.

Hipper had an extensive run, from participating in the Norwegian incursion, blasting the destroyer HMS Glowworm all while combing the torpedo spread it fired as well as suffering ramming speed a direct collision as the destroyer decided to ram the ship in an attempt to put her down under, being a lone raider and successfully blasting ships in some convoys as well as indirectly being responsible for some convoys that broke up and got pounced on by u-boats, to the slugfest in the Barents Sea where she got hailed so hard that she needed repairs and also made Hitler ragequit the navy had it not for the newly appointed admiral Karl Doenitz convincing him otherwise although this didn't really effectively repair her immediately and got scrapped soon after. Prinz Eugen got hit by a magnetic mine, was Bismarck's consort when they engaged Hood and Prince of Wales and was the first to detect them with her glorious hydroacoustics, participated in the Channel Dash, was a commerce raider for a while and survived the war as a prize awarded to the US which then promptly used her in Operation Crossroads as a nuke victim volunteer although she keeled over and sank soon after.

Somewhere in Brest the Admiral Hipper is drydocked.

In-game wise, I actually am impressed with this freaky ship class as I believe the Hipper is the only cruiser that can effectively lolpen a battleship although I have doubts if she could even score citadel hits. The AA suite leaves much to be desired but her ergonomics look quite impressive alongside the good gun handling and range of 17.7km is delishus combined with her reasonable shell speed. As I'm currently in the Yorck (and raging all the way because the ship at stock refuses to go my way), I'd love to get her because glorious heavy cruiser.

Still stuck on Nukeberg and may have the patience to try grinding again, hopefully I'll get to the Admiral Hipper someday

I'm still finding German naval losses during the Norway Campaign rather laughable, how does a modern brand new navy with top notch equipment lose so many ships against the Royal Navy which was a mix of old and some new ships.

The Germans lost

1 heavy cruiser (Blucher lol - to land based guns and 40 year old torps)

2 light cruisers (including Konigsberg)

10 destroyers (all ran out of torps and ammo at Narvik and sunk by HMS Warspite)